Commercial motorcyclists, 'Okada' riders, trooped out again Tuesday November 6 (today) in their large numbers to protest the alleged killing of one of their colleagues by a policeman in Ilupeju area of Lagos. There was palpable fear in the air and emotions too high to calm down in the area as policemen fired bullets and teargas indiscriminately to disperse the protesters. A facebook user, who witnessed the melee wrote on his wall that a policeman shot an 'Okada', leading to the latter's death, after failing to stop the 'Okada' from escaping on Coker Road in Ilupeju.

It was reliably gathered that the 'Okada' man had escaped being arrested by the policeman when he was shot dead in the morning around 11. As soon as the 'Okada' rider fell to the ground and died, the alleged killer policeman and his colleagues were said to have taken to their heels while the dead rider was left in the pool of his blood, but was later taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It would be recalled that we ran a story of some policemen who stripped an 'Okada' rider naked near University of Lagos. It is a stretch to imagine that policemen and traffic agents (LASTMA et al) have now devised brutal and dehumanising methods of enforcing the new Lagos State Traffic Law which, among others, also bars okada riders from about 475 roads in the metropolis quite aside from the thousands of motorcycles belonging to okada riders that were seized and burn sometime back.